Culture, neutrality and minority rights
| Author | Aurélia Bardon |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885115596694 |
| Date | 01 July 2018 |
| Published date | 01 July 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Review Articles |
E J P T
European Journal of Political Theory
2018, Vol. 17(3) 364–374
! The Author(s) 2015
Culture, neutrality and
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minority rights
DOI: 10.1177/1474885115596694
ept.sagepub.com
Aure´lia Bardon
University College London, UK
Alan Patten, Equal Recognition: The Moral Foundations of Minority Rights.
Princeton University Press: Princeton, 2014; 327 pp. $45.00 (hbk).
Abstract
Alan Patten’s Equal Recognition offers a new and powerful argument to support the
‘strong cultural rights thesis’. Unlike other culturalist arguments, his argument is not
based on a problematic and essentialist conception of culture but on a particular under-
standing of liberal neutrality as fair treatment and equal recognition. What justifies the
existence of such rights is not culture itself but what culture means for people and the
negative consequences it can have for them when they form a cultural minority. Patten’s
argument, however, faces another challenge: I argue that culture and neutrality cannot
be fully reconciled, and that, ultimately, the concept of culture might not be playing any
significant role in his argument for minority rights.
Keywords
Culture, neutrality, fair treatment, equal recognition, minority rights, liberal culturalism
In Equal Recognition, Alan Patten resuscitates the debate on culture and minority
rights in liberalism. The debate dominated political philosophy in the 1990s and
2000s (see notably Gutmann, 2003; Kukathas, 2005; Kymlicka, 1989, 1995, 2001;
Kymlicka and Patten, 2003; Phillips, 2007; Taylor, 1992; Young, 1990). Two camps
were opposed. On the one hand, multiculturalists denounced the hypocrisy of differ-
ence-blind neutrality and insisted that cultures should be recognised, protected and
preserved, and therefore that cultural rights were necessary. This camp included both
communitarians such as Taylor and liberal culturalists such as Kymlicka, who reconcile
liberalism and cultural rights through the liberal values of freedom and equality. On the
other hand, nonculturalist liberals responded that liberalism already had the relevant
Corresponding author:
Aure´lia Bardon, University College London, School of Public Policy, 29-31 Tavistock Square, London WC1H
9QU, UK.
Email: a.bardon@ucl.ac.uk
Bardon
365
normative resources to justify certain rights or accommodations in specific conditions
when they were required to guarantee equal and fair opportunities of all individuals,
but that there was no need to refer to the problematic concept of culture or to con-
troversial ideas of the role of culture in individuals’ life (Appiah, 2005; Barry, 2001).
Patten’s book provides a powerful and innovative argument that breaks those lines: he
refuses to choose between liberal neutrality and cultural rights and instead argues that
cultural rights are in fact justified by a certain conception of liberal neutrality.
Although Patten is ‘very sympathetic with Kymlicka’s theory of cultural rights’
(Patten, 2014: 5), he believes that there is a need for a restatement of liberal cultur-
alism because it lacks a firm moral foundation (Patten, 2014: 8). There are two main
differences between Patten’s argument and liberal culturalism. First, Patten argues
that liberal neutrality provides the moral foundation needed to justify cultural rights.
Whereas Kymlicka argues that ‘the idea that the government could be neutral with
respect to ethnic and national groups is patently false’ (Kymlicka, 1995: 110–111),
Patten claims that the liberal state ‘can, in principle at least, be neutral between
majority and minority cultures’ (Patten, 2014: 27). Second, Patten is more critical
than liberal culturalists towards the idea that cultural rights and nationalism can be
reconciled. Liberal culturalists, including Kymlicka, believe that nation-building is
compatible with liberalism, and that liberal states can, within certain limits, favour
one particular national culture over others (Patten, 2014: 172–173). Patten recognises
that the liberal requirement for neutrality towards culture does not always outweigh
the claims of liberal nationalists (Patten, 2014: 176), but he argues that such consid-
erations are highly context dependent and that cultural rights can be seen as setting
limits on liberal nationalism (Patten, 2014: 177).
I start with a reconstruction of Patten’s very complex argument for strong cul-
tural rights (1–4). I then focus on what I take to be the main challenge for Patten: I
do not think that culture and neutrality can be fully reconciled, and ultimately the
concept of culture might not be playing any significant role in his argument for
minority rights (5).
1.
Culture is a problematic term for liberals. It does not fit easily with the liberal
understanding of a society or of an individual. Classical liberals have for a long
time avoided the problem and assumed that liberal neutrality and equal treatment
of all would be enough to manage cultural diversity and to actually make everyone
free and equal. But the problem persisted and it became obvious that a more direct
political solution was necessary.
In certain cases, it seems that the solution does require granting minority rights.
This is not really the object of disagreements among liberals anymore: culturalist and
nonculturalist liberals alike would in many cases agree on what should be done. The
main disagreement is about the justification of this solution. Patten’s introductory
chapter clarifies the terms of this disagreement by identifying four distinctions
between culturalist and nonculturalist claims about minority rights: it opposes prin-
cipled and pragmatic reasons, basic and derivative considerations, minority-regarding
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European Journal of Political Theory 17(3)
and third-party-regarding or impersonal reasons, and permissible and required
policies (Patten, 2014: 11–24). Patten’s claim is that ‘there are basic reasons of
principle for thinking that certain policies of recognition and accommodation are
owed to cultural minorities as such’ (Patten, 2014: 11). However, he immediately and
significantly softens this claim by adding that it remains context dependent: it will be
more or less robust in different situations, depending on the background context.
Patten’s argument for strong cultural rights is based on two concepts: culture and
neutrality. A specific understanding of what culture is and why it matters (Chapters 2
and 3), followed by a specific understanding of what neutrality means and how it is
realised (Chapters 4 and 5), leads to the defence of minority rights under particular
conditions (Chapters 6, 7 and 8). The argument is highly sophisticated and it is
necessary to look at each of these three different steps in more detail.
2.
Patten makes three important claims about (i) the definition of culture, about (ii)
why it might be problematic if a culture is disappearing and about (iii) the special
character of cultural...
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